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You know how they say weight loss happens where you don’t want to lose it but never from where you want it to? You know, we want our waists to be smaller but then we lose our chest instead? Yeah, well, my fingers have lost weight. Yes. You read that right and I hope you’re smiling at that comment just as much as I am.

The amount of times my rings have fallen off my right hand is getting ridiculous. Even more ridiculous are the places I’m finding them. My washing machine, my bike bag, my fridge…yes you also read that right. They’re literally falling off left right and centre any time I put my hands into a pocket, or I grab something. Always falling off.

Last week, my rings fell off when I was out and I panicked. Quite bad. Not because they’re financially valuable but because they’re emotionally valuable. There is a lot of sentiment behind these two rings and people know that. From the friends who know the reason I bought them to the friends who comment that they simply never see me wearing any other jewellery. They know they mean something. I’m also a big believer in that, we can have fewer things and appreciate them so much more than if we had twice as much. I’d like a third ring though and I’m working towards that third ring right now.

September 2013. I sat shaking, fighting back tears as I went to see a therapist for the very first time. I will never be as scared as I was in that moment. I remember rubbing my knuckles on my right hand where the bruises from purging were. Perhaps I was trying to hide them but maybe it just provided me comfort to fidget a little bit. To be honest, ask anyone, I can’t sit still at the best of times! I remember looking at my hands nearly every day and I could see the bruises and the bruises have become scars. Scars that aren’t necessarily visible to others but they’re visible to me.

Like everything about myself, I wanted to see something beautiful when I looked at myself. I’ve never cared about my scars, I’ve always been proud of them but the mental scars are harder to accept. I bought myself a ring half way through my first recovery. Something small but beautiful, a bit like me I suppose. The reason wasn’t to have something beautiful though, not solely that. It was because if I wanted to purge I would have to take the ring off. I wore it all the time, even in bed (although thanks to miracle finger weight loss I can’t do that anymore). So I really had to stop and think about my actions, about what I was doing, about whether I really wanted to take that ring off.

When I hit my first real recovery, when I could say I was recovered no longer recovering from eating disorders I bought a second ring, a smaller one that could fit nicely on top of my first. A symbol of my journey, the fact I started out with nothing but scars but ended up with something beautiful to show on my right hand. I understand that I have relapsed and naturally that means the rings have come off but sometimes it takes a little bit of writing and a little bit of reflection to remember the meaning of these two little rose gold reminders.

They’ve provided me comfort when I’ve been stressed because playing with them calms me down because they remind me that I’ve done it before and I will do it again. Now, I can’t just buy rings each time I relapse and recover but it would be nice to get another one, one to remind me yet again that what starts out in the dark can end up so damn beautiful in the end.

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3 thoughts on “Rose Gold Reminders”

Hi, it’s Jean. Thank you for liking my blog enough to follow it. There’s only one section on ED but maybe something else in it will prove helpful.

I have the opposite problem — my knuckles are getting large and deformed from arthritis so i can’t wear most of my rings. They have to migrate from finger from finger! Have you considered getting a small guard ring to keep them safe when your fingers are small?

Hey Jean, I like to follow a variety of blogs, I feel like every struggle people go through links to one another and I gain valuable experience from reading about other people’s lives. My blog also isn’t just about my ED, I was born with mild disabilities, suffer from epilepsy and psoriatic arthritis, it’s just the majority of my posts focus on my ED.
I’ve never considered it before but I definitely will now! I know what I’ll be looking at first thing tomorrow morning! Thank you for your lovely comment ❤

epilepsy and psoriatic arthritis suck big time. My daughter has horrible psoriasis but not arthritis yet, thank god. All I can do is cross my fingers! And I will cross them for you, too. And me, I have just plain old arthritis and that’s enough for me!